Sin and Tonic: Sexuality and Spirituality Belong Together
I used to think my sexuality would prevent me from having a vocation. Now I know that sexuality is my vocation.
When I was a child, I knew what God felt like. I spent a lot of time in nature by myself, but I never felt alone. I knew my family was nearby. I knew how to find my way back to safety. And I could feel my connection to the world around me in my body. I believed in God without the slightest bit of doubt. I could feel that force all around me. My mom called it God. But I found it in the love I felt for my family and for the animals we raised. In every plant, in the sky; I could see the goodness of life. I knew that we were here on earth to experience it fully, to love the people around us, and to help those who needed it. These things were as evident to me as the ground beneath my feet. Love was always there when I looked. And because that’s how I saw God, I never doubted.
As I got older the certainty of my experience of God never left me. I embraced the teachings of Jesus because they matched what I felt to be true. Love each other, feed the poor, and don’t stone women to death for breaking arbitrary sexual rules. These aligned enough with my vision of God that I didn’t immediately question the teachings of the Catholic Church we went to every Sunday.
The older I got, the less the God of my experience matched the God of the church. I couldn’t see any reason that having sex before marriage or cheating on your spouse was considered as bad a stealing or murder. The God I knew wouldn’t torture souls for eternity for using the free will he had given us. But these things seemed like fuzzy details I could work out later. In the meantime, I wanted more of the feeling that religion had given me.
As I got close to high school, I considered my vocation. I admired the female mystics of the Middle Ages, I longed to devote my life to helping end oppression in the name of God like the liberation theologians. But for some reason, I would have to give up romance to do these things. Which was a problem. Because the only thing I wanted more than to please God was to fall passionately in love.
I had been reading multiple romance novels a week since sixth grade. I loved romantic movies. Each memorable movie kiss, every grand romance of fiction, made me more excited for the day when I would finally fall in love and start to experience these mysteries myself. I wanted to feel the full power of the strange feelings these stories hinted of. Not just pretty ones like love and affection. I wanted the dark ones also. Heartbreak. Lust. Power. Weakness.
When I finally fell in love it was clear to me that waiting until marriage was not for me. My belief in God had been verified by the feelings of my body. And my belief in love was the same. My body told me what it wanted and I couldn’t deny the truth of it.
Pursuit of both the spiritual and the sexual seemed impossible. As a young Catholic woman, both were off limits without the approval of a male authority. So I compromised. I didn’t wait until I got married to have sex, but I married the first guy I slept with. I left the Catholic Church for the Quakers. I found a watered down version of myself that seemed acceptable to everyone around me.
We all seem to learn this lesson as we grow. In small ways and in big, we are told that we can’t have what we want and our beliefs are naive. Growing up means you stop fighting, accept a watered down version of who you thought you’d become. But every compromise you make seems to lead to another concession. And before long, you deny the truths you once knew in your bones. We dismiss our deepest instincts towards love and connection as childish games of pretend.
I’m here to tell you that these truths are not lost. I began the process of rediscovering mine when I realized that I’d already given away too much in my relationship. Being honest about my feelings and desires was terrifying; for me and my husband. Progress was slow. Allowing that love-starved, kinky, sexually curious part of myself to be seen and fed with love took years. I’m so grateful I did. Because the more I expressed this part of me, the more the intense feelings of spiritual connection started to resurface.
Learning to embrace my sexual self without shame taught me more about unconditional love than any religious text. The more I loved myself, the more I remembered what it felt like to love God. I thought that my interest in sexuality was why I couldn’t fulfill my religious calling. Instead, it brought it back to me.
Today, I’m a somatic sexologist with an altar in my office. Helping people find meaning, joy, and pleasure in their sexual expression is my vocation. After 46 years of searching for my own meaning, I found that the answer is still the same as it was when I was 15. This time I’m not waiting for permission to follow what I know to be true.
Great photo.